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The topic of international change is one of the most elusive areas of inquiry in the field of
IR. While it would be hard to find in academic texts a more frequently used term than "change,"
the fact is that our grasp of the subject remains weak. There is no consensus among IR scholars
either on the most appropriate approach to study international change or on the best way to
differentiate between its various types.
This thesis seeks to contribute to our understanding of international change by exploring
theoretically the problem of the most basic possible change - the process of replacement of a
multi-unit system by a different kind of multi-unit system. Specifically, it examines the claims
that the contemporary international system is in the midst of transformation, the results of which
are in many crucial respects reminiscent of the way politics was conducted or structured in the
Middle Ages. Political authority is said to be shifting from the state to other international actors
and the emerging order can be likened to the medieval system of overlapping authority.
The following study shows that upon close inspection the idea of new medievalism cannot
stand. Its central claim is that system transformations are legal revolutions in which one
fundamental constitutive principle is being replaced by another. This principle specifies the
manner in which political authority is distributed across the system. Political authority is above
all a legal notion and the proper approach for investigating its fundamental change is
jurisprudential. Analyzing the international society of states as a legal order requires us to look
at the viability of its fundamental constitutive principle, sovereignty. There are at present no
signs that would indicate it is being replaced. The neo-medievalists mistake political authority
with power of performance and this leads them to faulty conclusions.